


None Without Fear

by vintage_granddad



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Found Family, Hunk is a mechanic but also just the nicest sweetest guy around, I'll update the tags as I go, M/M, Pidge is a trans girl sorry I don't make the rules, Post-Apocalypse, and no one important dies, established relationship for matt/shiro, everyone gets their own plotline, i swear to god this is going to have a happy ending, paranormal investigator Keith, then also developing relationships with others
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-20
Updated: 2017-08-07
Packaged: 2018-10-21 06:13:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 12,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10679370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vintage_granddad/pseuds/vintage_granddad
Summary: When Matt Holt receives a cryptic phone call from Shiro, he and his younger sister set out on a cross-country journey to find him. On their quest to the coastline, they pick up a ragtag team of fellow travelers, who bring to the group a unique set of skills that will help them survive in a wasteland wrought with disaster. As they travel, they learn from one another, and begin to understand again that there is more to life than just surviving.





	1. The Beginning

_"This is not something that can be renounced,_  
_it must renounce_

__

_____It lets go of me_  
_and I open like a hand_  
_cut off at the wrist  
_

_(It is the_  
_arm feels pain  
_

_But the severed hand_  
_the hand clutches at freedom)”_  


Shiro’s voice sounds so small over the phone, so far away. _That’s because it is_ , he reminds himself. But there’s something else there, something else to it. There’s an edge, an urgency. “Matt,” Shiro breathes, and for half a second, Matt doesn’t even recognize it as his boyfriend. He looks over at Pidge, sleeping soundly, blissfully unaware, in the passenger seat next to him. Around them, the dark of night just beginning to fall. It’s probably still pretty light out where Shiro is, probably perfect weather, too. 

“Yeah,” Matt replies softly, and pulls the car off to the side of the road. 

Shiro lets out a sigh of relief, and he hears Shiro whisper under his breath: _oh, thank God._

It’s been nearly two months since he had last heard Shiro’s voice, and even though he hadn’t thought he could ever forget it, it sounds unfamiliar all the same. Like a song he once knew all the words to by heart, but now there are pieces missing. The realization stings a little, and he vows not to let Shiro’s voice slip away again. 

Matt turns the car off and gets out, walks around the front of it and sits in the tall grass, leaning against the front tire. He is acutely aware of the sound of Shiro’s uneven breathing. He hasn’t really said anything, and yet Matt knows something is wrong. Completely and irrevocably wrong. “Shiro, I’m here, talk to me,” Matt urges quietly. 

“I - I don’t have a lot of time; my phone is about to die. Matt, they’re coming. They’re capturing people, and taking them away. I managed to escape and I’m hiding, but they’re gonna find me, Matt.” He hears shuffling, and Shiro swallows. “They’re gonna find me, and when they do-” 

“Who? _Who_ is coming? Shiro, where are you? Are you still in San Francisco? Where are your grandparents? How many of them are there?” Panic is rising in his throat, he wants to scream. He has no idea what’s going on. Matt hasn’t interacted with anyone from the outside world in months and now, out of the blue, the first thing he’s hearing is _they’re coming_. It’s almost comical. Almost, in that way where at some point, someone will jump out and yell that he’s being pranked. But the fear in Shiro’s voice is too real to fake. He’s known him for a long time now, and Shiro’s a terrible liar. Matt knows that he is really in danger. 

Shiro cuts him off. “I just wanted to say goodbye, Matt. I just wanted to hear your voice one last time. Tell Pidge I love her, and, you, God, _Matt_ , I love you so so much.” 

“Shiro, no.” Matt’s throat feels so tight he can barely get the words out. “No, no, Shiro, I’m gonna find you. It’s gonna be okay. I’m coming for you. Don’t worry, I’m gonna save you, I swear to God, I prom-” and the line went dead. 

If you had told Matt Holt a year ago that the world was ending, he would have laughed in your face. Yeah, things weren’t looking so great, but at his core, he was an optimist. He believed that people were inherently good and that everything would work itself out. Even as things began to deteriorate around him, he held fast to the idea that things were going to be okay. Now, well, now he wasn’t so sure. 

The past two months, he had been working as a camp counselor at an LGBT+ youth camp: stationed in the middle of nowhere, with spotty electricity on good days, and no internet or cell service. Fortunately for Matt, he was (finally) going to be able to count these hours as an internship, which was required for graduating, while also being able to keep an eye on his younger sister. The only downside to it was that he would be unable to talk to Shiro for the entirety of the summer. The two of them were used to it by now, though, as it was Matt’s seventh year attending the camp. Nothing had really felt out of the ordinary up until this point. 

Matt had been living in a bubble: a perfect, isolated little bubble, in a cabin on a lake. He had spent his summer teaching youth about sustainable farming and tolerance and how to build a banging campfire. It was his third year as a counselor, after having attended the program as a teen himself, and Pidge’s first year attending. All things considered, it had been a good summer, relatively uneventful. Until now. 

It was only by chance that he was able to take this call. Only by chance that he would be here, on this road that _finally_ has cell service at a time that Shiro called. And if it had been any other way, he would have found it in himself to be grateful for that, but as it was, he couldn’t be. He looked down at the phone, to see that it had three hundred plus unread texts (mostly from Shiro) and his voicemail is full. His battery was at 70% after charging in the car for the past hour or so, and it’s approaching eleven at night. 

For a moment, Matt feels lost and overwhelmed. If anything had happened differently, he might have never known what had happened to Shiro. Hell, he might _still_ never know. He doesn’t have any answers, no sense of closure, just a gaping open wound at the very core of his being. Just a half-cocked promise at the tip of his tongue, just a hope, a wish: _I’m coming for you._

He hears stirring inside the car and is immediately reminded of the task at hand. Pidge has to go to the hospital. Pidge had fallen and hit her head pretty bad and though the camp nurse was fairly certain Pidge was going to be okay, they were insistent that she be taken to a hospital, as camp protocol mandated. Matt had offered to take her, she was his sister (and in his cabin grouping) after all. The closest 24 hour health care center was over two hours away, though. Which is how he found himself on the side of a desolate highway in the middle of the night, clutching his phone almost hard enough to break it. 

Pidge gets out of the car, mumbling “where are we?” before her eyes adjust to the light and she sees Matt’s tear streaked face. “Matt, what happened?” Pidge is calm, despite Matt’s description of the cryptic phone call, and tries her best to help settle his nerves. 

They try to call Shiro back, but his phone is dead and Matt knows in his heart of hearts that it won’t be charged any time soon. He hopes that They haven’t found him, whoever They are. Pidge takes his phone and reads through all the texts, and he’s grateful for it, because he honestly isn’t strong enough to read them himself. She gives him the rundown: it’s a lot of vaguely fearful messages, references to things happening on the news that Matt and Pidge haven’t been keeping up on. 

“I know you’re probably never going to read this, and I don’t even know if you’re alive or not at this point, but they’ve been dropping bombs in the midwest, and I’m really worried about you.” Pidge reads out loud. “And then three days later he wrote: There’s these men in suits at the door, they’re telling us to come live on their commune but my grandma doesn’t wanna give up the house. They said some oddly threatening things and left. I can see them talking to the people across the street though...” As she reads, Pidge’s voice gets tighter and tighter, until finally she’s shaking and can’t read any more. She’s scrolling furiously through the messages, and Matt watches at her facade of bravery drops. 

Matt pulls his younger sister into him and they hold each other on the side of the road for a long time. He’s trying not to cry, God, he’s trying. Pidge is shaking violently against him. He runs his hands through her long hair, and forces himself to say _it’s going to be okay_ , but he knows it isn’t, and Pidge knows he's lying. 

They get back in the car and continue the drive to the hospital. Pidge tries to think of explanations, tries to make it right, but there are some things you just can’t theorize away. There’s one message in particular from a boy named Charlie that Matt and Shiro went to school with. “I heard about Boston. Matt, are you okay???” Which they just refuse to think about or acknowledge. They think of reasons why people could be going door to door with threats, but ultimately they’re all just theories and neither of them know anything close to the truth. 

They make the drive with only Matt’s sense of duty willing him forward. It’s the only thing keeping him going. He’s numb. He doesn’t feel like any of this is real, it’s just a bad dream. Heck, it’s got all the right components: the dark, vague landscape, Pidge getting injured, the unfamiliar car, the looming sense of unease, the empty highway (not too uncommon for this time of night but foreboding nonetheless), the bare parking lot outside of the hospital and the desolate hospital itself. 

The sign says it’s open 24/7, but the darkened building and complete lack of hospital personnel would lead him to believe otherwise. The doors aren’t locked, and, against his better judgement, Matt pushes them open. From what he can make out, which isn’t much in the dark, the inside looks like a crime scene: carts and tools and files spread all across the floor. It smells bad, and not just in the general hospital bad kind of way, but in the way that would lead any normal person with any sense of self preservation to run for the hills. It smells like _rot_. 

Matt feels strangely at home here, and it only adds to the feeling that none of this is real. He’s so wrapped up in his own thoughts, convincing himself however he can that it’s a dream, that Shiro is okay, that Pidge is okay. That no bombs were detonated, nothing ravaged the country, that no one is worried about them. 

“I think we should just head back to camp,” Pidge is saying as Matt presses further into the darkened clinic. He’s feeling along the walls for a light switch, but feels nothing other than the cold, sterile tile of the walls. He turns to look back at her, still pressing forward, calling out into the darkness, when he trips over something. It’s a heavy, immovable thing, and in the moments before his face hits the floor, he realizes what may have happened here. 

Matt is immediately scrambling to his feet, wiping the blood from his nose and backing up, away from the body. He grabs Pidge’s elbow and runs them towards the exit, back out through the maze of winding empty halls and back to the car where he locks the doors behind them. “I think,” Matt says, panting, “we should just go home.” 

They’re sitting in the locked car and it’s all starting to click into place now. He’s noticing things he hadn’t seen before. He was on a mission earlier: get Pidge to the hospital, get her help (despite the fact that she insisted she was _fine_ ). They look around and realize that the parking lot isn’t quite completely empty, there’s a few cars parked with doors still open, windows smashed. He looks up at the hospital, something dark coiling in the pit of his stomach. 

They try to call the camp, but it won’t connect. Then he tries to call his dad: dialing every number Sam Holt has ever had for his various work phones. He tries their house phone, their parents’ cell phones, but nothing goes through. Finally, he calls 911, but it just rings and rings and no one ever answers. 

It’s beginning to dawn on them just how utterly alone they are now. 

Pidge watches him frantically dialing everyone he knows, every help number, every hotline, every passing friend from school. She’s completely silent for a moment, taking it all in. “That’s definitely an option,” she responds finally in a small voice, “ _yeah_ , I wanna go home.” 

Trembling slightly, Matt puts the key in the ignition, starting the car, eager to put this all behind them. 

If you had told Matt Holt this morning that the world had ended, he wouldn’t have believed you. Now, however, he knows it’s true.


	2. The Crater

When Pidge woke up, the world around her felt hazy. Sounds were muffled and everything looked like it was through thick layers of saran-wrap. It took a long time for things to shift into focus, even after she put her glasses on. Aside from the normal disorientation that comes along with waking anywhere aside from your own quarters, things felt off. The car was parked on the side of the road - presumably a highway, very likely I-95 South.  


Matt was sleeping at the wheel, his head slumped against the window, drool dribbling down his chin. He was still buckled, still holding the car keys in his frail fist. His glasses were still on. Pidge looked at him, a fondness blooming in her chest, because despite it all, despite what has happened and what was to come, she’s got Matt by her side to help her through. He’s always been there for her, always been her number one advocate. She wouldn’t rather have anyone else with her now.  


They had only been on the road for an hour or so after The Hospital Incident before Pidge passed out once again, and therefore, Pidge has no idea how close to home they may or may not be. The pale morning light filtering in through the dirty car windshield painted the world in a beautiful, calm pallet, and if Pidge tried hard enough, she could almost force herself to believe that nothing bad ever happened.  


Pidge opens the car door and slips out into the cool morning air. She looks up at the conifers lining the road, towering taller than any living thing has got the right to. In the pressing, desolate darkness of the night before, they had felt so much more ominous, and somehow more inviting. As though their looming frames, ancient and twisted, were a home she was yet to return to or a giant dark wave fronting an unknowable sea. Now, with the spilling daylight, Pidge knows better. They don’t feel nearly as welcoming now that she can see them individually.  


Pidge misses the ocean.  


And more than that, Pidge misses her computer.  


She’s never been much of a nature person - and honestly she still really _isn’t_. But hearing Matt talk about this summer camp year after year made her hellbent on attending. The LGBT+ youth camp was, in Matt’s own words, the highlight of every year since he had been fourteen (which was the youngest age one could attend). Pidge was just seven that first summer, and to have Matt away from her for three whole months had been pure agony. Despite the age gap, they had been joined at the hip before that summer, and Pidge didn’t like to be on her own.  


Pidge spent her summers on their grandmother’s living room floor, playing with the GameBoy that Matt had been forced to leave behind, but she always dreamed of going with him, if for no other reason than that she hated missing out. Pidge didn’t like that there could be stories she didn’t know about. She supposes that that might be part of the reason she loves her computer and the internet so much. She’s able to keep tabs on everything relevant to her.  


The world is still kind of swimming around her. _It’s from the fall_ , a voice in the back of her head suggests, but she quickly shoots the thought down, hellbent on being fine. There’s no time for anything else. There’s no other option. Pidge can’t be anything but perfect and healthy right now. Pidge is hungry, and tired, and dehydrated as all hell, but none of that is even registering over the roar in her head, the rising fear of what’s to come.  


And there’s nothing she could do to stop it. Not a god damn thing.  


Pidge looks down at her feet in the tall grass, her pink toenail polish just now beginning to chip after almost a month of wear, and for some reason, that’s all she can think about. About how the nail polish on her toes outlasts her fingernail polish every time. But that doesn’t really matter.  


Without thinking, she’s moving, leaving the relative safety of the area surrounding the stolen camp vehicle and entering the forest. It’s dark despite the pale morning light seeping through the leaves. Pidge marvels at the way the shadows play on her skin. She doesn’t even realize how deep into the trees she had gone until she turned and found that she could no longer see the car.  


It’s so quiet. It’s the loneliest place Pidge has ever been. There are no animals, no wind, no one to hear her if she fell. She cups her mouth with two small hands and screams into the trees but they swallow the sound whole. It doesn’t echo back to her. It doesn’t mean anything.  


But then Matt is calling her name. He sounds worried. _He should be worried_ , Pidge thinks, retracing her steps to the road. She gets back in the car with no explanation and doesn’t say anything for a long time.  


They’ve been driving for so long without seeing another car that it feels unsettling when Pidge finally notices the glint of metal in the distance. She grabs at Matt’s arm, and sits up straight, pointing towards it. Matt slows down as they approach - their speed on par with Pidge’s mood. Something feels off about it. The closer they get, the more uncomfortable she feels. They’re still too far away for her to see anything other than the color of the car, mostly just the shiny reflection from the metal surface.  


“Don’t stop,” Pidge says as they get closer, as the details begin to come together, forming a picture Pidge doesn’t want to have to see. Matt either doesn’t hear her or ignores her, pulling over behind the overturned van. “Stay in the car,” Pidge whispers, but they both get out, hands shaking.  


They’re all dead: the parents probably didn’t even survive the crash. But they’re still strapped in, held in place by their seat belts. Pidge immediately goes back to their own car, and watches as Matt scavenges the blue minivan for supplies. Pidge tries not to think about the family inside. They were not unlike her own: two parents, two children, a son and a daughter. The daughter was still in a booster seat. There were flies on her face.  


Matt comes back to their car holding a bag of groceries. _They were probably on their way home from the grocery store_ Pidge’s mind supplies. She forces herself to ignore the tear tracks running down Matt’s cheeks.  


The exit they need is only three away from the overturned car. It’s not nearly enough time to get that imagery out of her head. But she’s beginning to see the familiar signs and landmarks, or rather, she was. It’s foggy, despite the morning growing old. It’s a dense fog, heavy, enveloping almost everything in sight. Where there should be the rise of familiar structures, there is nothing more than the all-encompassing grey fog. Pidge wishes it would swallow it whole. She wants to roll down the window and touch it, imagining that it’s a solid, tangible thing, hungry and menacing and soft. She closes her eyes, letting the sound of the car and Matt’s CD wash over her.  


She is jolted suddenly from her thoughts by Matt slamming on the breaks. His arm flies out in front of her and holds her back against her seat. Even with his attempt to keep her still, she gets the breath knocked completely out of her.  


“Oh god,” Matt breathes. Pidge is seeing spots. Beside her, Matt is still whispering, a steady stream of “oh god, no.” She finally looks up, forcing herself to look beyond to the fog. It takes a moment before it finally dawns on her.  


There’s nothing there.  


Before she’s aware of what she’s doing, she’s unbuckled and out of the car, her unclad feet toeing the edge of the world. It goes down so far she can’t even see the bottom, it’s so wide she can’t even see the opposite edge. Around her, behind her, the world is charred and burnt, dead silent.  


The city is gone, decimated.  


It’s like there was never anything there.  


A wind picks up, whipping sand at Pidge’s ankles. She takes a step forward. _I heard about Boston_ , Pidge remember’s Matt’s friend had texted. She takes another step. _I heard about Boston. I heard about Boston_. Pidge had wondered what the hell that had meant. What _about_ Boston? She looks over the edge, her eyes straining to look past the fog. The wind is howling now, blowing her long hair all over the place. It goes down so far, it’s a bottomless, dark pit.  


She looks out over the crater that used to be a thriving city, that used to be, she thought, the heart of America. A stronghold. A home. _Her_ home.  


And it’s not welcoming. It’s not warm and inviting and loud and bright. It’s void, it’s empty, it’s hopeless.  


Without thinking, Pidge takes another step, past the threshold of land and into the open air, willing herself to fall. She feels numb.  


Matt grabs her arm and pulls her back harshly and wraps his arms around her. He holds her still as she screams, as she fights against him, hitting him, begging him to let her go. Her face is buried in his chest, soaking the front of his camp uniform with tears. She screams until her voice is raw, until she has no more fight left in her and then she just clings to him: a lifeboat, the only thing she has left in this world. 

Her mind is so loud, so very loud. She’s having too many thoughts at once, and the din rising, a crescendo into just one word: _mom_.  


This.  


This is the loneliest place on earth.


	3. Kia Rio

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahh! Finally a chapter that isn't centered around the Holts! Hahaha, I hope you all enjoy this installment. It was a lot of fun to write from a different point of view. Huge shout out to everyone who commented on the previous chapters!! Your support means the world to me. I would like to thank everyone for being patient with me as I piece this together. Also, I apologize for the wait. I just moved (again) and everything is pretty disorganized for me and I had trouble finding time to write. As always, your feedback is appreciated.

Everything Keith owns fits in the trunk of a red 2001 Kia Rio. It isn’t a glorious car, but it’s _his_ car. He bought it with money he had saved up himself, not with credit card scams or pick pocketing people. It’s the one _honest_ thing Keith has in his life, and he bought it off a guy who died four months later. 

Even when he bought it, almost two years ago now, the car was having trouble. It had a tendency to shake and the breaks had failed on more than one occasion. Sometimes the car wouldn’t shut off or turn on and it was altogether not worth the money he had to put into it every few months to fix it. 

“Dude just buy a new car,” the first comment on his post read. He shook his head, thumb hovering tentatively over the _reply_ button before he continued scrolling down the comments thread. He couldn’t do that. It wasn’t just that the car was the only thing that was truly his, but he was somewhat _sentimental_ about these things. He had got this car for a reason: a 2001 Kia Rio was the first car he ever drove, back in 2005 when he was 8 years old, living with his sixth foster family. 

He was by no means old enough to be driving a car, but he had been there for less than a week and he wanted to leave. He stole the keys out of his foster-mother’s purse and snuck out in the middle of the night. He was immediately caught, as she was out on the front porch sneaking a cigarette and saw him driving down the long driveway. The next morning, she taught him to drive on their front lawn; a huge, excessive expanse of yard with relatively little on it aside from a few large, fruit-bearing trees. The family used the lawn to host parties, apparently. The kind where the women wear fancy summer frocks and drink wine and eat snacks served to them on plates carried by men in suits. Keith had watched one such party from the top floor window, but refused to come down. 

She said that if he wanted to drive so bad, she wanted him to at least know what he was doing. 

She hadn’t been mad at him for trying to run away. 

She just wanted him to be safe. 

He couldn’t just get a new car. Not now. Not after everything he’d been through. He returns his attention to the comments thread. Most of them seconded the first comment, a discouraging thought - an _annoying_ thought. He had hated to do this in the first place, and the fact that most of the comments weren’t helpful only strengthened the bitter taste in his mouth about the post. 

Keith’s website was for one thing and one thing only: a record of his explorations and investigations into the paranormal, and more specifically, a research compilation on the fascinating world of cryptozoology. He was, unofficially, one of the country’s leading experts in the field. People were always contacting him, trying to set up interviews, asking for his “professional opinion” on various unexplained phenomenon. 

At the beginning, he spent a lot of time in libraries, reading up on the science, local legends, anything he could get his hands on. They were a free place to exist: hard to come by when you’re broke and homeless. They were generally warm and comfortable, quiet, and, most importantly, no one would bother him while he was there. He had read pretty much everything anyone had ever written on any number of cryptids, as well as all the books on the paranormal. He had even published a book of short stories he had written himself under a pseudonym - he didn’t need his imagination tainting his reputation of being a methodical and thorough investigator. No, what he posted on his blog was real, factual, it was science. 

Except for his most recent post. That one was real all right, but it wasn’t science. It was his first ever post that was personal, that had nothing to do with an ongoing investigation. It was a cry for help. Keith’s car had broken down, and it seemed like it was broken down for good this time. His car was broke and he was broke and he needed a good mechanic. The last one he had visited, back in Rhode Island, had overcharged him like hell and, apparently didn’t even fix all the god damned problems with the car. He had maxed out credit cards that didn’t necessarily belong to him, and was definitely running the risk of being caught the longer he used the ones he had flat out stolen. 

He needed someone affordable and reliable and close by. He was conducting an investigation on Centralia, a ghost town in Columbia County, Pennsylvania. Or at least he had _planned_ to. He hadn’t quite made it there before his car broke down on the side of the road. He posted that he was in the county, and asked any local readers to give him info on someone who could help. 

Keith groaned as his phone’s low battery notification popped up. The day was just going from bad to worse, wasn’t it? But... 

Well, it looked like his luck was turning up. Finally. “i’m so sorry to hear about your car. i’m an avid reader of your blog and i want to help. i live in fernville and work in an auto shop in bloomsburg. if you can get your car to my shop, i’ll do the work for free.” Keith could feel his heart pounding in his chest. Bloomsburg wasn’t that far from where he was. He had seen signs for it on the road. He pinched himself just to be sure this wasn’t fake. Holding his breath, he typed out a careful reply asking for the name of the shop, then sat back and waited. 

The original poster of the comment replied less than five minutes later, but Keith didn’t check for another few hours, trying to conserve his phone’s battery. 

He called a tow truck and hoped, prayed, for the best. 

The commenter was a man of his word, to say the very least. But to say a little more, a literal angel. Keith hadn’t been sure if he had believed in those or not. He certainly believed in malevolent forces. Nothing before now had really truly led him to believe there was anything counteracting that. Well, that wasn’t the entire truth, he reminded himself, vaguely remembering her hands white knuckling the passenger door as the car spun in circles, tearing up the lawn, her curly brown hair wild, flying with wind rushing through the open windows. He pushed her laughter out of his mind and forced himself to refocus on what was here, what was real, what was right in front of him. He rubbed his sweaty palms on his jeans. 

_Fuck._

He introduced himself as Hunk, the name that had come up alongside his comment. Keith hadn’t thought that was his real name, but thought better of questioning it. He had assumed it was an alias, though Hunk never said anything to the contrary. It was fitting, Keith thought, swallowing hard and taking Hunk’s gloved hand in his own. Oh god, Keith’s hand was dwarfed by it, disappearing almost completely in that firm grasp. 

Hunk was tall, broad, and dark, with a shiny layer of sweat gleaming on his skin in the early summer heat. He had a black smudge on his left cheek and his hair was held out of his face with a bandanna. Hunk was everything Keith had ever dreamed of back in high school; a wild fantasy come to life. And on top of that he was _nice_ , and he was _smart_ as all hell. 

Hunk directed Keith to a waiting area, then brought him coffee. “Wifi password is Talon3,” he says, strong fingers lingering over Keith’s as he hands the cup over. At Keith’s inquisitive look, he explains that it’s his boss’s daughter’s name. Keith murmurs his thanks, forces himself to drink the scalding liquid, and plugs his phone in to the outlet behind him. He’s vaguely aware that all his equipment is in that car, everything he worked so hard to con people out of and steal. Vaguely aware that this could be a set up, that at this very moment, Hunk could be doing to Keith what Keith had done to so many others, and yet he closes his eyes. He dozes off. 

Keith is eight years old when he was placed in his sixth foster home. The home is the biggest he has ever seen, with a huge front yard and a pool out back. And yet, there’s the fewest number of people he’s ever lived with inside. Emilia and her husband, Cecil, were an older couple. Or at least Cecil was. Keith had a hard time pinning Emilia’s age. Cecil had a white mustache and no hair, which he hid by always wearing a hat. He was tall and thin and never said very much at all. 

His wife was short with wild brown hair. She talked quickly, and when she was nervous, she would pace and sneak outside for a cigarette. 

Keith liked that about her, it reminded him of home. 

He also hated that about her, it reminded him of home. 

Keith hated a lot of things about her. He hated how she tried so hard. He hated how she acted like they were a family but they weren’t. She wasn’t his mom, and Cecil wasn’t his dad and neither of them ever would be. He hated their stupid fake smiles. He knew that in two weeks, they would be bored of him, and he would be sent somewhere else where no one cared about him. It was okay. 

Except it wasn’t okay. 

Keith went down that windy staircase and she was sleeping on the couch, barefoot, sweatpants, and a tank top covered in paint in the middle of the afternoon. Keith turned on the television on and slowly put the volume up to the maximum level until she woke up. She smiled at him. She never yelled. 

She asked him if he wanted to watch something with her. 

He did, very much so. They had every channel. Not to mention Keith had never lived in a house that had a television he was allowed to just watch. But he turned the television off, and stared at her for a long time. 

That much is real. But the memory begins to change, as dreams often do, and when Keith looks around, he finds that he is on their boat. Cecil and Keith’s dad are standing on the deck. They’re arguing. They don’t belong together. Behind him, he hears Emilia whispering that they’ve always just been ghosts. Something to chase after. A wave crashes over the edge of the boat and they both melt away. Emilia grabs Keith from behind, picks him up and pulls him away from the mess. She’s crying. _Come look at this, sweetie_ she says in her bravest voice, carrying him to the other side of the boat. She points down at a school of fish. The water is so clear he can see all the way to the bottom, several leagues away. At the bottom of the ocean, he sees himself as he is now, staring back up at him. He looks dirty and scared. _Don’t you want to help him?_ Emilia whispers in Keith’s ear. _Oh, I wish I could help him,_ she says, more to herself. A mermaid swims between them, fat and pallid with a pink tail. _He’s waiting for you_ , she says, holding Keith close. Keith can’t see her, but he knows she’s looking down at the water. She sits him up on the rail so his feet dangle over the edge. He looks up at the sky, only to realize it’s night time. _Go to him_ , she says but she sounds so _sad_. 

_I think I want to stay_ , Keith says, looking down at his future self. _I wanna stay._

_I know you do. But he’s waiting._

_I can wait. It’s okay,_ Keith says, turning to look at her. She’s lighting a cigarette. She puts it out on her own hand instead of smoking it. _Please?_

_But_ he _can’t, Keith,_ and she points down. There’s no one there. 

When Keith wakes up, Hunk is still working on his car. Night has fallen, though, and when he checks his phone, he sees that it’s past ten o’clock. He’s been out for a few hours. Keith hoists himself out of the chair and walks over to where Hunk is bent over the hood of his car. Hunk must hear his approach cause he backs up and wipes his face with the back of his hand. 

“Hey, sorry I haven’t finished yet. How was your nap? How are you feeling?” He asks all at once. Before Keith gets a chance to answer though, Hunk continues talking, “if you’re hungry, there’s leftover pizza in the fridge.” 

“I’m uhh, good. And no rush, really.” 

“I don’t think I’m going to be able to finish it tonight. I hope that’s okay. You can stay at my house if you want?” Hunk says, and God, the guy looks truly apologetic about it. As though he isn’t doing Keith the biggest favor in the world by fixing his car for free in the first place. 

Keith sits in the passenger seat of Hunk’s truck, a silvery pickup that has a massive scratch along the driver’s side of it. Somehow, he would have expected Hunk to drive a nice car, a flashy car. Or at least a clean and well maintained one. None of the above were true, but it got them to their destination safely. 

Hunk lived in a duplex, in a neighborhood full of houses that looked exactly the same. It had two bedrooms, but one of them was clearly a study. The bedrooms were upstairs. He set Keith up on the couch, where Keith immediately fell asleep again. In the morning, Hunk cooked him breakfast and maybe it was just because he was hungry, but Keith was pretty sure Hunk had some god-given talent when it came to cooking. 

Keith ended up staying with Hunk for the whole day. They fell into a comfortable sort of silence, despite a strange tension humming beneath it. Keith sat around the shop while Hunk worked. Hunk explained what he was doing to the car but half of what he said went right over Keith’s head. 

But of course, the day had to come to an end. Hunk got Keith’s car working better than it ever had and, well, Keith was dragging his feet but he knew it was time to say goodbye. 

“Hey, I know you probably get this a lot,” Hunk says, standing next to Keith’s car, “but I have something I want you to look at.” 

If it were anybody else, Keith would have been pissed off. He’s tired of this. People are always coming to him with their pictures of “ghosts” or “demons.” But Hunk had just done him a huge solid and he kinda owes it to him. Not to mention, he sounds so god damned earnest about it, and so Keith waits as Hunk pulls out his phone, scrolls a moment, and holds it out for Keith. 

It should have been easily dismissible. It always is. But Keith looks down and he can’t look away. It’s a darkened hallway, with the top half of a figure clearly visible in the middle. It appears to be a child - a girl - part of it’s face obscured by the wall. It fades into nothing. It’s a whisper, not entirely see-through, but not entirely solid in any tangible sense of the word. The shape of it is definitively a human torso, but fuzzy around the edges. In the mirror at the end of the hall, Hunk taking the picture is clearly reflected. The figure is not in the mirror. 

Keith takes the phone, his hands trembling slightly. 

_It’s doctored,_ Keith thinks, but he feels a shiver run down his spine. _This isn’t real._

“Where did you take this?” He says. 


	4. Matt's Bag

What Matt Holt Has In His Backpack At The End Of The World:

1\. Two Clif bars. They’re both peanut butter. Pidge loves peanut butter, but Matt only likes it sometimes. He likes it in Reese’s because there’s some kind of a nostalgia factor at play, but he doesn’t care for it on toast or in cookies. He doesn’t like the flavor of it. But Pidge likes it. He brought them with him to camp, stuffing them to the very bottom of his bag to give to Pidge. It’s her first year at camp, and he thinks it will help her if she’s feeling homesick because Mom always buys them. But to his surprise, Pidge never expresses any homesickness, and so Matt has just been saving them for a rainy day. 

2\. His phone. It doesn’t work now. He dropped it when he was examining the overturned vehicle and the screen has been blank ever since. It vibrates if he toggles it between silent and ringer mode, but he can’t navigate it. There’s no service anymore so he can’t even use voice commands to try to call someone anyways. But he holds on to it in case. He’s still holding out hope that maybe Shiro will call him. He’s still holding out hope that Shiro’s okay. 

3\. A map. It was in the glove compartment in the camp truck. For all his travels and years spent at camp, he’s completely useless at reading a map. He knows where they are only because he’s been following road signs and because he’s been to these places before. But every town surrounding Boston is desolate and empty, abandoned and none of them have any sort of familiarity to them. Without the life in them, they’re just bones, and you can’t tell who a person is from their skeleton alone. 

4\. A Magic The Gathering card. He actually didn’t know he had this on him, and must have left it in the bag when he was packing for camp. It’s all bent from being pushed around by everything else in his bag. If this were any other summer, maybe he would have been upset about that. But he had been planning on selling his cards anyways. He needed the money so that he and Shiro could get an apartment together. It didn’t really matter now. 

5\. A water bottle. It’s half empty. It’s one of those really nice, wide-mouthed screw top ones that holds 32 ounces of liquid. Pidge gave it to him for Christmas a few years ago, and it’s since gotten pretty battered so you can’t read the measurements along the side. There were stickers all over it from various on-campus organizations, but most of them had peeled off. Rather, Matt had peeled them off when he got anxious in class. He had a nervous habit of picking at things, and nothing was really safe from that. He often caught himself absentmindedly ripping up papers or biting his nails. His mom had told him he should really just recycle it and get a new one, but it didn’t leak or anything, and he didn’t mind that it was kinda ugly now. 

6\. Sunglasses. They’re prescription, but he still rarely ever wore them. Somehow, he still feels like he can’t see with them. 

7\. A pouch of wildflower seeds. He’s never been much of a gardener, but someone was handing them out on campus and he took them, and they’ve been in his bag ever since. Do seeds expire? Matt sure as heck doesn’t know. 

8\. Neosporin. The tube is half empty. 

9\. A box of Band-Aids. Except there’s only two left. 

10\. His wallet. In his wallet, he’s got his debit card, his license, a gift card to Dunkin Donuts and a gift card to Starbucks. Both of them are completely full because Matt really isn’t a coffee drinker. He won the Dunkin Donuts one in a Know-Your-Roommate competition his freshman year at college. Matt and his roommate, a boy named Charlie, were joined at the hip for their first year. But then Charlie ended up transferring so that he could be closer to home, and they didn’t really talk much after that. The Starbucks card had been something his mother gave him. One of her coworkers put it in a birthday card, and she didn’t want it so passed it to her son, who also didn’t really want it. He hung onto both, nonetheless. There’s also a forgotten gift card to Denali behind the Starbucks card. Forty dollars cash. 

11\. Three pictures of Shiro. He keeps them in his wallet, but it’s worth mentioning. He printed them out for the specific purpose of carrying a picture of his boyfriend in his wallet, but he couldn’t pick just one. The picture on top is the same one from the Team Roster website, because it’s such a good, high quality photo of him. The one below it is a picture Matt took on their third date. They went hiking and Shiro is leaning against a tree. He’s got water soaking the front of his shirt from when Matt had dumped his water bottle on him moments before. He’s laughing. He’s so beautiful. The third picture is of the two of them together. Matt’s not really sure if Shiro has ever seen this picture of himself. Shiro is sleeping, drooling a little, in Matt’s bed. He’s completely naked, though a blanket covers him from the waist down. Matt took the picture as a snapchat to send to Pidge, but ended up saving it, and eventually printing it out to carry with him. Shiro looks so at peace when he’s sleeping. It makes Matt’s heart feel full. It’s maybe Matt’s favorite picture in the whole world. 

12\. A blue pen. 

13\. A lighter he picked up at a gas station. 

14\. A chapstick. It’s still factory sealed. It’s peppermint scented. He got it in his stocking last Christmas from his dad and honestly doesn’t think he’ll ever use it. But he keeps it in his bag, just in case. 

15\. A roll of Duct Tape. It’s half used, but for the life of him, Matt can’t remember why he ever packed it, or why he had it in the first place. 

16\. A flashlight. It’s a Mag Lite so it could also double as a weapon because the dang thing weighs a good five pounds. It uses something like six huge batteries, but he’s never had to replace them, despite the fact he’s had the flashlight for years. It was his dad’s flashlight, actually, and he borrowed it for camp and never gave it back. At one point, he may have felt bad about that, but now he’s glad he’s got it. It’s a piece of home. He can clearly picture it’s place in their home, in the bottom left corner of the broom closet. His dad never said anything about it missing. He either never noticed or didn’t care. The flashlight is always cool to the touch no matter how hot it is out. 

17\. A very dirty kneaded eraser from that one time he took a drawing class (which he was surprisingly good at). 

18\. A really smooth stone he picked up on a hike. 

19\. A fishing license. Which belongs in the wallet but for some reason is just floating around loosely in the bag. 

20\. A small, tattered field guild for bird watching. This was a Hanukkah present from his mom. It's maybe five or six years old now, but he carries it with him at all times. 

21\. Three nips, which are coconut rum, strawberry vodka, and fruit punch moonshine flavored. He snuck them into camp along with twenty others for him and some of the other camp counselors to share. He and four other counselors drank all the other ones on a Saturday night while they were sharing ghost stories around a campfire after all the kids went to bed. Matt’s never been much of a drinker, but he remembers that other counselors used to do it sometimes, and he wanted to keep the tradition alive. 

22\. A singular unmarked white pill. Matt is almost completely positive that it’s a Tylenol. 

23\. A compass, which, while Matt knows how to use a compass, is pretty much completely useless since he’s shit at reading a map. It’s pretty nice though. Engraved. A birthday present from his grandparents. 

24\. One of those washcloths that is very tiny and expands when you put it in water. It has a picture of The Hulk on it. This was also from a stocking. 

25\. Shiro’s old soccer jersey. It’s from freshman year. It’s kind of tattered, and way too big on Matt. It’s white with blue lettering: SHIROGANE, the back reads, and under it 00. The front says UCONN. Matt wears it to sleep most nights, and brought it along with him when he took Pidge to the hospital so he wouldn’t have to sit in his camp uniform in the waiting room. For some reason, he had felt like it would have been weird. Now, he’s just glad he has it with him. He’s just glad he’s got something of Shiro’s. It’s just something to hold onto. A physical reminder of the task at hand. It makes him feel sick to his stomach to think about it, to remember the crack in Shiro’s voice during that brief phone call. To not know where he is, or if he’s okay, or if he’s even alive, or.... At night, pulled over on the side of the road, Matt reaches into the bag and pulls out the shirt. He holds it close to him while he sleeps and he thinks about Shiro. He thinks about getting it back to him. In some weird way that Matt can’t quite place, it makes him feel safer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading and also thank you to everyone for commenting on the previous chapters. Your kind words and support means everything to me. Sorry that the posting schedule is a little erratic, it is a busy month for me. The next chapter is almost done and should be posted by Friday evening.


	5. A Change Of Plans

Three months ago, Hunk did something that would save his life: he helped a stranger. It wasn’t the first time he had done that sort of thing, and it didn’t seem that significant to him, but it did set in motion a series of events that would inevitably save him from certain doom, whether he chose to acknowledge that fact or not. 

Hunk was supposed to be in Boston in early July, visiting old friends from school. But fate had other plans - or rather, _Keith_ had other plans. Keith, of course, was the aforementioned stranger. Hunk didn’t know anything about Keith before he responded to the posting online. He didn’t know where he was from, what he looked like, how old he was or anything else. All he knew was that Keith was brave; brave in the way that Hunk himself would never dream of being, and for that, Hunk admired him. 

See the thing about Keith is that despite the fact that everything he writes is factual - he never adds his own speculations or presuppositions to the posts - he’s a natural storyteller. Hunk would describe him as a modern Hemingway - succinct, and probably an asshole in real life. Keith’s work was referenced by or cited by nearly every other paranormal blogger (though most people cite his work to prove the existence of the supernatural, whereas Keith’s own writing seems to convey the opposite). He’s gotta be the real deal. So when Hunk responds to Keith’s post telling him that he’ll fix his car for free, he’s completely shocked to see that Keith is... well, he’s just a kid. He’s Hunk’s age, maybe a year older _if that_. 

Hunk wasn’t entirely sure if Keith believed in the paranormal or not - most of his writings seemed to disprove the existence of ghosts - but that didn’t change the fact that Hunk was utterly engrossed and fascinated by all the stories floating around the internet about close encounters. It began after he had a ghostly experience himself, a little over a year ago, in which he was staying over a friend’s house and saw what he could only describe as a ghost. The blogs Hunk began following afterwards in his search for answers would describe his experience as a specter or a figure but Hunk knows what he saw, and he’s got the photographic evidence to prove it. 

And it was that photo, of course, that got Keith to stick around. Keith is nice. He’s quiet mostly, but he’s really funny, which Hunk was not expecting at all. He’s in desperate need of a haircut - or maybe he wears it that way on purpose. He’s somewhat of a hothead but his heart seems to be in the right place. All this really just boils down to Hunk really enjoys Keith’s company. 

Or rather, he _enjoyed_ Keith’s company. Keith isn’t with him anymore. 

You see, the past few months, Hunk followed Keith wherever he deemed fit. Hunk had quit his job, packed up his belongings and sat in the passenger side of Keith's newly fixed car. At first, it was just an adventure, the first one Hunk could ever remember going on. It was just Hunk searching for something he couldn’t quite place, just trying to keep a good thing going. And it seemed that Keith wanted him along for the ride. But as the summer stretched out in front of them, days growing darker and nights growing colder, Hunk realized that he had made the right decision not for the life experience he would gain, but because Keith was good at one thing and one thing only: surviving. 

And Hunk is praying that he proves that to be the case, that Keith can survive until Hunk can find him. 

He hasn’t the first idea of where to look. 

They began in West Virginia, and Hunk is fairly certain that they’re still in West Virginia, though it’s quite possible they passed over into Ohio. About a month ago, they were in a small town, in a grocery store when Hunk turned around to see a little boy collapse in the middle of the aisle. A few closer patrons turned him over and, even from where Hunk was standing he could see that the boy’s face was bleeding. A woman, presumably the child's mother, began screaming at the top of her lungs. Hunk took a few steps forward, trying to get a closer look, trying to get close enough to help. 

A hand on his elbow stopped him dead in his tracks. _Now’s not the time to become a hero_ , Keith’s voice said behind him, low, almost a whisper. They left the store, they left their half full cart behind, got in the car and didn’t look back as they peeled out of town. 

That night, Hunk lay awake in the backseat of Keith’s car, staring up through the window trying to remember everything. Trying to piece together what had happened. The boy collapsing, the blood, the screams. The part that haunted him most was another young woman, crouched down next to the child - not the mother, not the one who screamed but a first responder. She was wearing a white dress, one of those beach coverups. As Hunk turned back around, back towards Keith, towards the exit, he noticed something: blood dripping on the front of her smock. He took a final glance at her face, and he knew she didn’t know she the severity of her bleeding yet, but it was pouring out of her, from her nose, from her eyes. She didn’t even look worried about herself, just wanted to help the boy. 

After that, Keith decided they wouldn’t stay long in populated areas, but wherever they went, it seemed to follow, or else they were tracking the spread of it. It seemed they seldom rolled into a town without death looming at the entrance. 

When it finally became clear to Keith that there was no town in which they would be safe from pandemic, he abandoned his car and led Hunk deep into the woods, where they had been camped out ever since. That is, until Keith was taken, kicking and screaming, from their cave. In the fighting that followed, Hunk received a mighty blow to the head and in the moments before the world around him faded out, he heard the leader of their assailants mutter _leave him, he’s no use to us dead_. 

But Hunk _didn’t_ die. Miraculously, he found himself waking another day, cold and alone in the dark damp of the damned cave that Keith had chosen for them to call home, but it hardly felt so inviting without Keith’s smile to warm the place, without his laughter to fill the echoing caverns, without him in it. 

So Hunk dragged himself to the mouth of the cave, looked up at the moon and prayed that whatever they needed Keith alive for hadn’t hurt him, that he was still out there somewhere, that he was someone worth following into Hell and that he was someone worth saving. 

Because Hunk hopes he is. 

Because that’s what Hunk’s about to do.


	6. The Last Familiar Space

It was still for a time. The whole world was holding its breath, just waiting. It was like time slowed down, and it became so silent, so utterly without, that Pidge was sure her heart had stopped beating. It was just her, just her and the edge of the world, still as a painting, still as the corpse it was. Except it wasn’t a corpse. There were no bones, no echo or revenant of what had been. It was just dust, just absence for miles and miles and miles. Just a ghost. Nothing more than air. 

Did they make it out in time? Did they have warning? Or was everyone blissfully ignorant until the moments before impact? Were there any survivors? Was it even possible to survive something as horrific, as immense and destructive as that? As the gaping hole ahead? 

And as the nights camped out along the edge of the world dragged on, turning into dusty and dark days, one word became a mantra unvoiced in her mouth, silently echoed to herself as Matt charted the borders of the crater, finding abandoned town after abandoned town: _why?_

Why did they do it? 

And also, she supposes, as an afterthought: who did it? 

Perhaps it was an act of God. 

They’ve traveled through so many towns, but still it feels to Pidge as though no time at all has even passed. Most of the towns immediately surrounding Boston are decimated as well. When she closes her eyes, she’s still toeing the precipice, still looking over the edge, wind whipping her hair into her face and sand to her ankles. She can still feel it. Even in the safety of their stolen camp vehicle. Still, the sand scraping at her ankles like tiny pieces of glass. 

In the night, dark and leaden, Pidge waits for Matt to fall asleep. It takes him a long time, and she knows he thinks he’s being brave for her, knows he’s waiting for her own breathing to even out before he reaches into his bag and pulls out that old shirt. He’s always quick to put it away before Pidge should wake in the morning. When Matt is sleeping, Pidge doesn’t sleep. Pidge waits. She’s very tired. 

They’ve almost completely circled Boston and they haven’t come across another living soul. There’s no birds, no squirrels, no people. It’s just them and the dusty void ahead. In every town, they check for survivors, for people left behind. Matt has some sort of a system, choosing houses to break into, looking for evidence of other life. 

In Natick they go into a Stop & Shop, after they ran out of their looted food from the overturned van. Pidge sees their faces whenever she eats. It makes it hard to keep food down. The first thing Pidge notices is the smell. It hits her before they even enter the store. Matt has to break the doors to get in, and Pidge is glad there’s nothing in her stomach to puke up. They pull their shirts up over their faces to breathe easier but it’s little help. 

The store is full of flies. Pidge steels herself and steps further inside. It’s so dark. Her eyes water from the smell of it. They quickly maneuver out of the produce section towards the processed foods, things that have preservatives in them, things that will last. Matt takes some of the reusable shopping bags and hands two to Pidge. She looks up at him, and through the dark, she sees the glint in his eyes and she knows what to do. They go up and down the aisles filling their bags. Pidge grabs Cheez-Its and Pringles and Oreos, shoving two packages of each into the bag haphazardly. Matt grabs a few bags of mixed nuts, almonds (lightly salted), cashews, cans of vegetables, cans of soup. They go through the center aisles, avoiding the ends where the perishables have long since turned. 

Pidge rips open three bags of lollypops and takes only the watermelon ones and throws the rest back on the shelf. She grabs seven cans of RedBull (the GREEN edition), and opens a red one just to try it. Just because there’s no one to stop her. Her mom never let her drink these. She puts a jar of peanut butter in her bag, and then, reconsidering, grabs another, and a jar of jelly (strawberry). Matt, more sensibly, grabs a few packages of crackers. They’re whole wheat. Where's his sense of _fun_ and _adventure_? 

Matt grabs a matchbook and a box of assorted bandaids. Pidge slips a box of the dinosaur bandaids into her own bag, ignoring Matt when he tells her that she should be more practical with her bandaid choices. They’re just as practical, but with dinosaurs on them. She backs away down the aisle leaving him crouched in front of the various medications. Not interested. She heads back to the cereal aisle and grabs a box of Lucky Charms. 

Pidge and Matt bring their bags out to the stolen camp vehicle, parked in a handicapped parking spot, then go back for bottled water. Matt heads over to the pharmacy again while Pidge brings two cases out to the trunk. 

Once they’ve completely stocked up, they get back on the road and head towards Sharon, Massachusetts, to check for one last person before they leave New England forever in search of Shiro. But of course the town, like every town before is completely desolate. Pidge isn’t surprised. Matt misses the turn twice, looping back around at 40 above the designated speed limit before he finally slows down enough to make the left hand turn down the familiar street. Pidge supposes that maybe he just hasn’t been here as often as she has, doesn’t know the area as well as herself. She did spend the past seven summers here, after all. 

Their grandmother’s house is small and unassuming from the outside. If Pidge didn’t know that the basement made up the majority of the house, she would assume it was meant for only one person. Though, in a way, it was. Only one person had lived in it since their grandfather died. The house looks, perhaps, the saddest that it has ever looked. The darkened windows in the oddly bright afternoon sun remind Pidge of sitting shiva with her mother and grandmother two summers ago. It felt empty in a way she had trouble conceptualizing. 

Matt parks the camp vehicle in the driveway behind their grandmother’s white Camry, and gets out of the car. Pidge struggles to find her left flip flop before following him to the back door, where they know a spare key is hidden in a potted plant. 

The house is, as expected, empty. There is a thin layer of dust coating everything in it, which leads them to the conclusion that it has been empty for some time now. In the bedroom upstairs, the bed is unmade. A million years ago, Pidge sat on that bed with her grandmother, watching Saturday morning cartoons while her grandpa made them breakfast - French toast. He didn’t like it, so it always came out different. It was always a gamble, grandma would say, with his cooking. Pidge, though, thought it was good. She sat at the kitchen table, wearing one of his black t-shirts that went all the way down to her knees. She called it a dress. It was the only thing she wore the whole summer. She took the shirt home with her at the end. Still wears it to bed sometimes. 

Matt immediately goes to their grandpa’s workroom downstairs. He's on a mission, looking for something, and Pidge doesn’t care to ask what. He’ll tell her eventually. Instead, Pidge sits on the edge of the bed and looks at the television set on the dresser, a film of dust over the screen. The sun hits it just right so it looks grey instead of black. Despite the dust, the television set is still reflective enough for Pidge to see her own face staring back at her. She looks dirty and tired, a wild, feral thing. Pidge begins to cry. She tries to stop it from happening, but once she starts, she can’t stop. She lays back in the bed and grabs the blankets in her fist, pulling them over her face, and rolls until she’s completely wrapped up in the thick, blue comforter. It doesn’t make her feel any better, any less alone. 

From the crack in the covers, she can see a single framed photograph on the bedside table, angled just so so that it seems the figures are looking directly at her. She wonders if they’d be proud of her, or if she’d just let them down. She wishes she could have been here. Her grandmother’s wizened face stares back at her until she finally tears her eyes away, and it feels like a concession, like she is admitting defeat. 

When she wakes up, Matt is sleeping next to her. It’s completely dark, the shades are drawn, but the room is swelteringly hot. She kicks the thick blankets off, and rolls over to face the other way, towards the door. She waits, standing vigil over her sleeping brother. She couldn’t save her grandmother, but Matt is still here, Matt still needs protecting, and Pidge is the one to do it. 

It comes so suddenly that she doesn’t entirely believe it’s real. She thinks to herself that she must have nodded off, that it’s just a dream. It wakes Matt, too. He looks up at her, bleary eyed and confused. It's completely silent again for a moment, save their own heavy breathing. 

But there’s something there, something unmistakably real: the sound of another human voice. The sound of a struggle. 

Immediately, Pidge and Matt sit up straight, fumbling in the darkness for something to defend themselves with. Matt hands Pidge a gun, and in the dark, she recognizes it as one from her grandfather’s collection downstairs. She doesn’t have the slightest idea how to use it, but it doesn’t matter. It’s probably empty or busted. They creep down the hall to the front door, where they peer out the window. 

Across the street, light pours out from the window, a pillar of smoke bellowing from the chimney. 

They’re not alone.


	7. The Compound

Her world had always been small, secluded, but they were never truly alone. The radios haven’t picked up on a signal in over two weeks, and she knows in her heart that they won’t find one by expanding the range. They’ve truly been cut off, once and for all, from the outside world. Now, they have no means of communicating with the rest of the country, no way of knowing what’s happening beyond the wall. Now, they really are on their own. 

Her father used to tell her that her bones were made of compacted stardust. It wasn’t a lie, not completely, but it wasn’t the whole truth, either. He had never meant to mislead her, but she was beginning to realize that the world wasn’t quite so simple. Of course everything was made from the same stuff in the stars, but she was hardly a descendent of the light. She was just a little girl. She was just a _child_. And she was _afraid_. That was all. 

She used to climb up to the roof and look at the stars. She used to think that maybe, if we were made from them, spun from them like sweaters from a spool of silvery thread, perhaps, in some obscure cosmic cycle, we could be returned to them. But she had watched them lower the body into the ground with her own watery eyes, and no amount of screaming could stop them from doing it. Her mother wasn’t in the stars, she was below her feet. 

Allura wasn’t made of stardust. She was made of blood and sinew, flesh and bone, same as anyone else. And like anyone else, she was breakable. Fragile in the most human way. Cracked right down the middle. 

Allura's world is small and it only ever grows smaller. There’s no way for newcomers to join the compound, and the only way out is death. There seems to be an awful lot of that, lately, with many of the remaining compound inhabitants reaching an age where that sort of thing is only to be expected. But it doesn’t get any easier. 

Now, over a decade after the death of her mother, she sits alone in her room. Downstairs, she can hear Coran arguing loudly with the gardener’s boy about whether or not it’s possible to make contact with the outside world through radios. Otherwise, the Altean Compound is silent. She looks out the east window, and the redwoods are so thick, so tall, she can’t even see the borders beyond. Across the room, it’s a completely different view. The land unfolds, flat and tilled, stretching out to the edge of Allura's world: a safer world, a superior world. A small world. From this height she can see beyond the wall to the ocean on a clear day. Barely. It’s just a line on the horizon, slightly darker where the sky meets the land. At least, she thinks that’s the ocean. She can’t even be sure. 

Allura can’t remember the feel of salt water, it’s so distant a memory that she can hardly say she misses it. The ocean is from before they closed the doors to the Compound walls. It’s ancient history. Besides, she was never enraptured by the depths, she was more interested in space. She knows that not so long ago, space travel wasn’t such a wild concept, but that’s all over now. 

The radio broadcasts had ended two weeks ago, and Allura supposes that that was one of the last things to go. The television had stopped working, as well as the one phone on the compound. Space travel probably would have ended long before that. How long, Allura couldn’t tell. 

The Altean Compound was designed to be a self-sustaining utopia. It is about sixteen square miles, encompassed by a thick wall that practically touches the clouds. The inner walls are lined with solar panels, and within those walls live almost every single person Allura has ever met in her entire life. Those people reside in mostly single story cabins, but there’s also a handful of barns, sheds, ruins, storage facilities and windmills. And of course, nestled between the thick forest and the fields, right in the very center of the compound, lies the castle. It’s an immense, and truly incredible work of architecture that would have been deemed ahead of its time. Nearly as tall as the wall itself, its many windows allow for lots of natural light, though it’s the only building within the compound with electricity. 

Nearly all fifty remaining inhabitants of the compound live within the castle walls, though not all. Allura’s childhood friend, Sel, ended up moving out of the castle to join the guards at the great gates, which had been permanently closed over a decade prior. Someone has to make sure no one breaks through the weakest part of the wall. 

There are a few trails within the compound, and those are traveled by bike or foot. Allura isn’t even sure if she’s ever been inside of a car, though she’s seen them on tv, heard stories about them from her father. There are some abandoned neighborhoods that existed before the walls were constructed: those who lived there were given the option to stay, but most people ended up moving outside of the compound. Allura wonders how well that worked out for them. 

When they were children, Sel and Allura used to sneak out of the castle on rainy days, skipping their lessons and running through the forest barefoot to the ruins. There, they would break into houses and pretend they were queens of the world, or that the houses were haunted. They would make up stories or a great tragedy befalling the land, leaving the buildings abandoned, and they were the only people left on the whole planet. 

Somehow, that was ideal for their sense of childhood adventure. They were in love with the idea that it was just them against the elements. 

Now, faced with the fact that they may very well be alone in this world, Allura is terrified. 

She hasn’t met anyone from Outside, not in a very long time. She hasn’t talked to anyone save for distant relatives over the phone, but those calls stopped coming. In the library, Allura heard her father whispering with Coran that he knew this was going to happen, that this is why he closed off the compound in the first place, that they’re safer like this, but that doesn't do anything to quell her anxiety. 

It’s been two weeks since the radios went down when it happens. 

Allura is old enough now that she doesn’t waste time thinking this strange girl is an angel. She knows she isn’t. She’s a refugee. And yet… well, Allura can’t explain it. She’s never experienced it before. 

The plane crash happened in the middle of the night, and it took nearly until the middle of the next night to put out the fires. There weren’t many survivors, and those that did survive, won’t talk. They’re hollow people. Allura can’t even begin to fathom what they've been through. 

When she was a child, Allura’s father told her that people were made out of stardust, but it wasn’t until she was nearly twenty years old that someone made her want to believe it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry that this took so long. However, things have (mostly) calmed down for me so I'll be able to write more frequently now. As always, I live for your comments, and I hope you enjoyed this installment!


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